First of the Ascension
by Sunrazor1
Summary: A year in darkness. A journey into light. Revelations, homecomings, and the baring of souls. You know, the usual stuff.
1. One

**First of the Ascension  
By Sunrazor**

**Classification: **Drama, angst, some action and possible slash.  
**Rating:** R for now. Language and violence.  
**Spoilers: **The whole series is fair game, but especially Inga Fossa.  
**Archiving:** Anywhere as long as you ask me first.  
**Email:** sunnyds at gmail dot com.  
**Feedback:** No feedback makes the baby Jesus spit up all over.  
**Disclaimer:** Harsh Realm and all characters and situations belong to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions, and the rat bastards at 20th Century Fox. No infringement intended.  
**Notes:** This is my first attempt at writing within this fandom. I have only the vaguest idea of what this thing is, exactly, and I'm really not sure where it's going to go. But it might be fun to find out, yeah? 

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_Here, back, down a long and straight track  
I have chose the long road -  
That leads me to god knows  
So I can't stop right now_

Even the good stars can fall from grace and falter  
Lose their faith and slide  
But I can't get an ocean that's deep enough for my day

It's the first of the ascension  
It's a sad way we've flown before the storm

-The Frames, _Fitzcarraldo_

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-1-

Much of the time, there was darkness.

Here and there were patches of light, dim and cold, faint reminders of a time when there had been something other. There was also hunger, all-consuming and permanent. He could not remember a time when he had not been hungry.

Besides the darkness and the hunger, there was pain. The pain was caused by the hunger, of course, but also by fists and sharp rocks, creatures moving in the gloom who hurt when they had to, and many simply when they wanted to. At first he had tried to fight, to defend himself, but that had been so long ago, and the hunger made it difficult. Increasingly he found the best thing to do was to curl himself up and become as small as possible, to not react, to not even scream or moan. Eventually, if he was lucky, they would grow bored and move away.

Sometimes new things came. They were stronger and more frightened, and they were also louder. They made sounds with their mouths, strange clickings and smooth, flowing rushes of air. Some of the sounds he recognized, but not many. He thought that perhaps he had once been able to make sense of all of them, but those days were gone, if they had ever existed at all. What had been didn't matter. Food mattered. Survival mattered.

He crawled through the dark, trying to keep himself low and unnoticeable. He hadn't eaten in two sleeps, and he was starting to weaken. Once, before the last time he'd slept, he'd managed to get a place at the spring that jetted out of the wall, murky and foul-tasting. He had gulped the water down greedily, so much that he had been sick after. No matter. When you found something here, you took as much as you possibly could. Nothing was certain.

There was a faint skittering sound up ahead. He stopped, raising his head, his nostrils flaring.

Again.

He moved forward slowly, the pads of his front and back feet lifting and falling, lifting and falling. Careful. Easy. Silent. Whatever was up ahead, it didn't sound like the things that hurt him.

He went a foot or so more, and stopped again, listening. After a few seconds it came again; it was right in front of him. Almost right by his forepaws.

_Wait. Patient. _

Soft fur brushed against him and he moved, faster than he would have believed he could. The thing was in his grasp, wriggling, squeaking. Little needle teeth sank into his left forepaw and he yelped but held on, trying to get a better grip on the thing, trying to twist its back in just the right way…

Something big and hard crashed into the side of his head and he reeled back, dazed, the lights flashing before his eyes the brightest he'd seen in forever. The furry thing was snatched out of his paws and he was cuffed again, rolling over backwards, bringing his front legs up in an attempt to defend his head against the next blows. But no blows came. Movement in the dark, going away from him. Flesh ripping. The loud, satisfied crunching of bones.

He curled against the wall of the tunnel, shivering. Warm blood trickled down into his eyes. The hunger gnawed at his belly; it felt like a yawning cave in the middle of him, growing more and more and exacerbated by how close he had come to making it just a bit smaller.

Although he had no concept of what a day was, he would have agreed with the idea that some days were better than others. Sometimes the bad days came in strings. He was in the middle of a long string of bad days, maybe the longest yet. Back in the beginning he might have been strong enough to outlast the bad days, but not now. Now they were closing in around him, like scavengers waiting for something to die. Waiting for him to die.

It loomed increasingly large in what remained of his mind that that was probably what was going to happen.

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He limped toward the sound of water, feeling his throat rasp and crackle. Five sleeps. It had been five sleeps since food and two since water. He was almost done, he knew it, but damned if he wasn't still going to try.

Ahead, mixing with the sound of water, was the sound of many creatures, snarling and hissing at each other as they fought for a place at the pool. The pool was small, so small, and there were so many thirsty. Many would not find a place at all. The weakest ones would creep away and die, or have their throats torn out by the stronger for presuming to challenge them. He knew that he was risking death by attempting to drink, but staying away meant death for sure. To realize that he felt that way, that he still wanted to live, despite everything, lifted his spirits and he moved faster. If he had to die at the teeth of one of his companions, well, that would be better than death huddled in a corner of one of the caverns, sick and weak and useless. He did not know why this was so, but he knew it all the same.

The sound of falling water was very loud now. He walked forward eagerly, squinting to see in the dim light. The dark tunnel he was moving through opened suddenly into a brighter cavern, a high gallery with a small pool of brown water along one side. Water fell into it from something round, protruding from the rock wall many feet above. Around it were crouched many things, filthy and pale and impossibly thin, most clothed in rags, some only in their own matted hair. Their appearance was not disturbing or strange to him. It mirrored his own.

He found a spot where the crowd was a tiny bit thinner, inching forward and trying to slide his body in between two of them. If he could just—

The larger of the two turned on him, growling, teeth bared. He dropped his head, making no eye contact, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. _Please, please, see how small I am? See how weak? It's not worth the effort of killing me._ The big one's lips curled back further, but it seemed satisfied. It turned back to the pushing, heaving throng around the pool.

He stayed where he was for a moment, eyeing the gaps, the way the bodies shifted. Then he pushed forward again, cautiously. One paw, then another, closer, closer. Not too hard, gradual enough, and he just might do it. Water glistened dizzily in his vision. It was so close. He could smell it, and it was intoxicating.

The big one turned again, snarling and rearing up, and this time he knew there was no placating it. It towered over him, its lips pulled into a fierce grin over yellow teeth. Fear intensified his vision, and he could see small white bugs crawling in the mane of its hair. He scrambled away, looking around for a direction to run in, but the thing was on him, knocking him back, its ragged claws tearing at his neck. The stink of it hung around him like a cloud. He put up a foreleg, whether to protect his head or to fight back he didn't know, and its jaws clamped down on it. He threw back his head and yelled, and its teeth were at his throat, its breath hot and foul. He opened his eyes. Something in the rock of the cavern ceiling sparkled, and a memory came floating to him, of looking up somewhere long ago and far away, and all above him black and glittering, and it was descending. It was so hard to breathe.

Then there was all heat and light and sound, and a whump of air that threw them both back, tumbling over each other, everything momentarily forgotten. The others in the cavern were screaming and running for the tunnels, clawing and trampling each other. His attacker pulled itself to its feet and looked down at him, seemingly weighing its immediate safety over its pride. Then it turned and ran. Groaning, he raised his head and looked toward the pool.

The pool was gone. In its place was a pile of rubble from which clouds of dust billowed, making him cough. The cavern wall was split down the middle. Light streamed in, harsh and blinding and he winced, raising a paw to his eyes and cringing back.

Shapes were coming out of the light and the dust. Tall, strong-looking things. Nothing like the hunched and filthy figures he was used to seeing, when he saw at all. These stood fully upright, and moved with grace and speed. In their hands they carried some kind of sticks, and they pointed these at the few cowering things that remained, making more of those incomprehensible sounds.

One came toward him, and he briefly considered making a run for one of the tunnels. But he was injured, exhausted, and surrounded to boot. He lay back, swallowing his fear, simply waiting for whatever came next.

He was not expecting what came next.

The figure knelt beside him, lifting his head, pushing aside his tangled hair and peering into his face.

"Hobbes? Hobbes, is it you?"

The sounds were familiar. The face was, as well; the scar on the chin, the hard blue eyes… he shook his head, trying to clear it. Trick, it was a trick. He had to get away, back to the tunnels, back to the dark. He scooted backwards on his ass, trying to pull himself to his feet and run.

Strong hands seized his forelegs, pulling him up, doing the work for him. "Come on, Hobbes, we have to get out of here." One of his forelegs (arms? were they called arms?) was slung over the other's shoulders, supporting him. "Any minute now the reinforcements'll get here, they'll block off the exits, and we'll all be nice and fucked." He called over his shoulder to one of the others. "Get as many of the rest rounded up and out as you can. But don't screw around; they catch any of us in here, you know what they'll do."

He half-stumbled, was half-carried to the gaping hole in the wall, and through it, and up a steep slope. The light intensified and he whimpered, trying to pull away, but an arm curled around his ribs, holding him to his course. He squinted. Green. Moving green. And further up, was that blue—

He was stopped, pressed back against the wall. "Wait." A sharp snick sound. "Hold still. This is gonna hurt. "

He was about to turn his head away from the hypnotically moving green to see what was happening when white pain stabbed into his chest. It shivered and warbled down his spine and through his arms, and he screamed, and a hand was clamped over his mouth.

"Quiet! You wanna get us killed? Let me get this finished so we can get outta here." A horrible _slicing _sensation, one more sharp stab, and then something bloody and gleaming was being waved in his face. "This… no more of this shit." It was snatched away, and he saw it arcing back down the tunnel they'd come up through, glittering, sending a small shower of blood droplets spinning through the air.

He was being tugged forward again, out into air so crisp and fresh it almost stung his lungs, but all he could see was the waving green over his head, and above it, the blue. It all spun sickeningly together, and then whirled up into blackness which swallowed him whole.


	2. Two

-2-

Mike Pinocchio was having an extremely good week.

On Monday he'd finalized the plans for his daring (suicidal, many had said) jailbreak. He'd spend the last three months finding the men he needed and convincing them to come along on his daring (and suicidal) jailbreak, and when brought together in one room, none of them had tried to maim or kill each other, which on its own had been enough to make the week a good one. On Tuesday he had led a successful raid of a large Republican Guard border patrol base, and had captured ten cases of weapons and ammunition, which had made it a very good week. On Wednesday he had received confirmation of some very important information, and that had made it an extremely good week. He would have gone ahead without the confirmation, but it was nice to have it all the same.

Now it was Thursday, and he had managed to break into a high-security detention area, rescue an old friend, and get back out again. And if he could get out of the area without being captured or killed, the week would be just about perfect.

Bullets whined past his head. _Hold that thought. _ He swerved off down an unpaved side-road, deeper into the cover of the trees. If he could just get to the main road…

He shot a glimpse up at the mirror. One humvee with two guardsmen a few hundred feet behind, and that looked to be it. So it was doable; he just had to do it.

The road dipped down into a stream-bottom. He drove through it at full speed, mud and water spraying up around the car. For an absurd second he thought about SUV TV commercials back home and almost laughed. Everyone wants to take a car tear-assing through the woods. No one wants to do it actually running from something.

A gap appeared in the trees to his right. He hesitated, and then turned, hard, and he was bumping and rattling over branches and through brush. He cast another look behind him. No humvee, but that didn't mean anything. If they hadn't seen him turn it might be all right, but assuming things was dangerous. He saw another gap ahead, possibly a deer path, and took it. A small sapling had the misfortune to get in his way; its branches briefly smacked the hood and then it snapped under the wheels and was gone.

Beside him in the passenger's seat, his head lolling back and forth drunkenly as the car shook and bounced over the forest floor, was the man he had done all this for. At least Pinocchio thought it was him; it was honestly hard to tell for sure, under the hair and the beard and the filth. And God, he was so thin, the old camo pants and t-shirt Pinocchio had hurriedly stuffed him into almost swallowing him up… But the eyes had been the same. Paler, wider, blue almost consumed with freakishly dilated pupils, but the same.

He hadn't said a word, and the total lack of recognition in his eyes had been disturbing, but there wasn't time to deal with it now. There were humvees to get away from.

He turned again, the brakes squealing in protest. Up ahead the trees seemed to be clearing. Whether it was the main road, or just where he'd originally come from was hard to say, but at least it was something. He pressed the gas pedal to the floor, gritting his teeth as the car bounced so high that he felt his stomach drop.

He broke the treeline in a shower of twigs and leaves, the wheels hitting blacktop with an almost audible sigh of relief. The road. Fuck yeah. He looked back and suddenly things weren't so fuck yeah anymore; seeing not one, but two humvees full of Republican Guard bearing down on one's ass had a way of doing that. He cursed loudly and lavishly and tried to consider his options in five seconds or less.

Go back into the trees? No. They were thick on both sides now, and even had there been a place he could turn, he wasn't sure the car would handle it well. Or at all. No, he was on the road, he had to stay on the road. He'd hope that further options would present themselves. In the meantime he'd just have to try to outrun them.

Up ahead was a straightaway, and that was bad. The car was agile and good on rough roads, but in a plain race against a humvee it would probably lose. Pinocchio chewed his lower lip, uncomfortably close to panic. He was running out of choices.

…Or was he?

Something gleamed in the sun several hundred yards ahead. Something on top of a small rise. Something that looked a lot like…

He was suddenly conscious of a growing rumble in his ears. He looked to his left and almost yelled with joy and disbelief.

On the left, bearing down on the road crossing, was a long freight train.

Trains had been a distant memory in this part of the country until Santiago had moved in and started logging operations along some of the main lines. He had started up a short-distance rail service to carry the lumber from the logging sites to the larger mills; it ran infrequently, and was heavily guarded.

It also usually involved a lot of freight cars.

Pinocchio jammed the gas into the floor, cursing and swearing and praying under his breath. Behind him were eight men with guns; in front of him was something huge and fast that was going to kill them both very messily if the timing was wrong.

He just had to trust that it wasn't.

The car screamed forward. The train roared. The humvees were only a hundred feet or so behind him, now, pulled up side by side. If they flanked him… well, he couldn't let them. In the mirror he saw one of the guardsmen raise his gun and ducked just in time to avoid the bullet that whizzed over his head. It crashed through the windshield, spidering a crack up the glass. He shot a hand up, pulling Hobbes down with him; Hobbes was still unconscious, and he supposed that was a good thing. Easier to handle him this way. Although it would have been nice to have an extra pair of shooting hands.

He raised his head just enough to see where they were and how far they had to go, and whether or not they were about to die. The tracks were less than forty feet away. The train seemed to be less than inches. Pinocchio sank back down again, squeezed his eyes shut, and, although he knew it was useless, stomped all his weight onto the gas pedal.

One second passed. Then two. Then three. The roar was deafening now, but they weren't dead. Pinocchio raised his head, turned—and burst out laughing. They were past. The humvees were stuck on the other side of the tracks. It was too perfect. It was something out of a movie. A few more shots made it past his head and he dropped down again, still laughing, reaching up to keep the wheel steady.

He turned to his right and haggard blue eyes met him. The laughter died on his lips.

Those eyes were completely feral. They looked terribly out of place on what was, despite how poorly it was kept, a human face; they would have looked more at home on a wild dog. Or a wolf.

"Jesus, Hobbes," Pinocchio breathed. "What the fuck did they do to you in there?"

Hobbes said nothing. Pinocchio grimaced and pulled himself back into the seat, reaching down and pulling Hobbes up with him. He turned to look behind them again; the train was receding on the horizon, but it still looked like it was going strong. For now, they were safe, and heading back into some heavy tree cover.

"You okay, Hobbes?"

Hobbes still said nothing. Just looked at him with those awful, spooky eyes. There was something obscene about them, Pinocchio decided. The Thomas Hobbes he'd known had been warm, friendly, deeply compassionate, and almost frighteningly intelligent. That Thomas Hobbes was nowhere to be seen now, not in those eyes. The spark in those eyes was either dead, or buried so far down that it might take years of digging to get it out. He'd taken Hobbes out of the cave, but maybe Hobbes had brought the cave with him.

Of course, maybe that was all bullshit. How could he know any of that? Maybe Hobbes just needed a while to adjust.

"So," he said, feeling more than a little awkward. "I guess you're wondering how I found you."

Hobbes didn't say either way.

"It actually wasn't that hard," Pinocchio went on firmly. "Once I found out you were alive, there were only a few places they could have taken you. I got together with a few people who knew some things about the inside of Santiago's operations in this area, and they told me where you were most likely to be found. Then I ran into someone, a guy who actually somehow got out of where you were, and he told me he'd seen you." Of course, there had been the nightmare months when he had been sure that Hobbes was dead, sure that the night he'd seen him dragged away by Santiago's soldiers, in Santiago's truck, in Santiago's cuffs, was the last time he'd ever see him. The thought of Santiago gaining a victory in that way had been terrible. The thought of a life in Harsh Realm without Tom Hobbes had been, unexpectedly, startlingly, even worse. There had been a time, a short time but still a time, when he had entertained dark thoughts about himself, thoughts he was ashamed of now, and ashamed that he would allow his own life to be so entangled with that of someone else.

But it was all moot now, wasn't it? Hobbes wasn't dead. Hobbes was here.

Sort of.

"The one thing I can't make sense of is why they didn't just kill you," he said. "And the only thing I can think is that the soldiers who took you were all complete tools and didn't recognize you, and no one knew you were down in the pit at all. Isn't that such a fucking joke?"

Hobbes didn't disagree. He stared.

"…Hobbes?" Pinocchio looked over at Hobbes, feeling slow horrible realization creeping over him. "Hobbes, do you know who I am?"

Hobbes said nothing.

"Hobbes, can you speak?"

Nothing.

"Hobbes… shit, Hobbes, if you can understand what I'm saying, give me some kind of sign."

Nothing.

Pinocchio slumped back in his seat, feeling his stomach drop for the second time in an hour. "Fucking wonderful," he muttered. Suddenly the week wasn't so extremely good after all.


	3. Three

-3-

Already his eyes were adjusting. Already he didn't have to squint quite so much in order to make anything out clearly.

He was in some sort of metal box, moving through this strange bright world at speeds that had been terrifying at first, but which now seemed almost natural. There had been the loud cracking sounds, and once the clear solid water-like stuff in front of his face had cracked as though something had struck it, although he had seen nothing do so. Then there had been the great roaring beast so horrifically close, he had been sure it was about to devour them whole. And through it all this strange creature (man? was it a man? …was he a man, too?) had been next to him, apparently controlling the box, every now and then jabbering those strange sounds at him.

The sounds definitely made some kind of sense. He wondered if they would make more sense as time went on.

But he couldn't wait around just to satisfy his curiosity. The creature (man) next to him had hurt him, had sliced into his flesh with something thin and gleaming, and had spilled his blood. Nothing had happened to him since, but that didn't mean that nothing would. The only way he could be sure he was safe was to be on his own. He had to get away.

He cast a quick look around him. The moving box was cramped, but no more so than some of the smaller caverns. It was also full of the most interesting things: bags, a few more of those sticks the men in the pool cavern had been carrying, strange, small, boxy things that would fit easily in the palm of one forepaw (hand?). He chanced a look behind him and saw more space in back, more bags, pieces of the material that the creature next to him wore, material that looked like a far richer and more luxurious form of what some of the things in the caves wore… and which he now wore himself. Wonders. He would have liked a chance to examine them all more closely.

But he couldn't let himself be distracted. He had to be watching and ready. He had to be prepared to take the first chance he saw.

But there didn't seem to be any chances immediately present. They were moving far too fast for him to be able to try jumping out of the box, and the creature next to him was still too wary. He thought it might be dangerous if he crossed it; it was strong and fast and had weapons he had no concept of. And there was something _coiled _about it, something taut and ready to spring. He had seen it in some of the strongest down in the caves. The best hunters had it.

He thought that perhaps he had had it, once upon a time.

He was still hungry, but the hunger had subsided into a dull ache for the moment. His throat was still dry and raw, but that too was fading into the background. Even the cuts and bruises were a faint unpleasantness in the back of his head, except for the cut on his chest, which throbbed nastily in time with his heartbeat.

What he was more than anything else was sleepy. The movement of the box was gentle and lulling. The light seemed to be growing slowly dimmer. The creature was no longer making his strange sounds, but the box itself was humming and buzzing in a way that was dangerously soothing. He couldn't fight it. He didn't really want to.

Tom Hobbes closed his eyes and slept.

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Pinocchio cursed under his breath. He had been doing a lot of that lately.

The last hour had been a silent one and an uncomfortable one. Hobbes had sat next to him, not speaking, barely moving, his eyes flitting around the interior of the car in a strangely bird-like fashion. Observing, scanning, recording the information. Maybe marking weaknesses and possible points of exit. Pinocchio had briefly toyed with the idea of binding his hands, but had rejected it as impractical and possibly even more dangerous than leaving them free. In order to tie them he'd have to stop the car and root around in the back for one of the lengths of rope he kept there. Perfect chance for Hobbes to do something, if he was going to do anything at all. He supposed he could hold him in place with a gun, but he wasn't convinced that Hobbes even knew what a gun was.

So he drove, and tried to stay as ready as he could for anything, which was fairly close to his normal state of mind anyway.

Hobbes was asleep now, turned sideways and facing him, his head against the back of the seat. Pinocchio noted the way Hobbes curled up into himself while he slept, saw the way he was unwilling to turn his back on the man beside him. Defensive. Even sleeping, defensive. In Harsh Realm one always had to be ready to defend against anything, but this was something else. This was something deeper, wilder. Something he didn't think Hobbes could just turn off.

He knew very little about the prison. It was the only one of its kind, or at least the only one anyone knew of; a system of tunnels and caverns carved deep into rock for some original, long-forgotten purpose. Only one combined entrance and exit, and that heavily guarded. No guards in the prison itself. No order. No control. Throw you down there in the dark and the cold and let you rot, let whatever happened to you happen. It hadn't occurred to him, when he'd first learned of the prison's existence, what a year in a place like that could do to a man.

He remembered reading a story as a child, where there had been a creature who had lived in caves for years. It had been described as a pale, slimy, frog-like thing with huge eyes and an insatiable hunger.

_Gollum._ Pinocchio shivered and shook his head fiercely. No. Not Hobbes. And he didn't look frog-like, anyway. Dirty, unshaven, emaciated… but no.

Emaciated. He would have to take care of that. And for right now…

He reached over, snapped open the glove compartment, pulled out a canteen and nudged Hobbes's shoulder with it. Hobbes jerked awake instantly, his eyes wild and frightened, and scrambled back against the door, steeling himself for blows.

"Hey! Easy!" Pinocchio held out the canteen, turning it. "It's not gonna hurt you. _I'm_ not gonna hurt you. Look, it's just for water." He flipped off the cap with a thumb and tipped it back, letting Hobbes see the water running into his mouth. He swallowed and held out the canteen again. "Go on. It's okay."

For a moment Hobbes simply crouched there, his eyes flicking back and forth from Pinocchio's face to the canteen, back and forth again, seeming to weigh the situation. Then he hesitantly put out one bony hand and took the canteen. He turned it over in his hands, puzzlement furrowing his brow. He lifted it gingerly to his mouth, tipped it back as he had seen Pinocchio do—and his eyes widened with amazement. Suddenly he was gulping it down, and Pinocchio snatched it out of his hands. Hobbes wrinkled his lips back, growling.

Pinocchio held out the canteen again. "If you don't go slow," he said, careful to keep his tone even, "you're going to make yourself sick. Take it a little bit at a time."

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Just as he'd thought; the man was torturing him. He'd offered him water—God, there had never been colder, sweeter water—and had taken it away just as the first drop had hit the bottom of his aching belly. Now he was jabbering again. Hobbes didn't want to hear it. He didn't give a fuck. There was water, water inches from him, he'd _tasted_ it, and now it was being kept from him. He bared his teeth, threatening. He'd kill for it, if it came to that. He didn't think he was strong enough to win against this man, but he wasn't going to die of thirst, either.

Suddenly one of the man's jabbering sounds seemed to hit his ears… and stick there. He felt some inner eye looking at it, turning it over like the canteen, examining its curves and edges. A quick hiss, a rolling of the tongue, and then the lips opened and drawn together again.

Slow.

The man was holding out the canteen again. There was no sneer on his face, no sadistic delight in his eyes. He was simply offering Hobbes the thing he wanted.

Slow.

Hobbes reached out, closed his fingers around the canteen… and the other man took his hand away. Hobbes looked at it for a moment, then up at the man, who had turned his attention back to the front of the box. He looked back down again.

Slow.

Hobbes raised the canteen, drank. Swallowed. Waited. Drank again. This time it was not taken from him.

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Pinocchio sighed. Hobbes seemed to have understood that, at least. One need taken care of. Food would just have to wait until later.

The shadows were starting to stretch out into late afternoon. They were in deep forest now, and the road bent and twisted through trees thick with early summer growth. They had changed roads several times; if they were being looked for, as they undoubtedly would be at some point, it would take them a while to be found.

He realized that although everything up until now had been carefully and meticulously planned, with allowances made for every slip-up and unforeseen occurrence, he had given very little thought to what he would do when Hobbes was free. His one idea had been to run, run as fast and as far as they could; then, once they were safely lost in the wilderness that was the majority of what remained of the United States of America, then they would figure out what was next.

But Hobbes was in no shape for hard travel. He was too thin, too weak, and he had injuries that needed attention. Fortunately, Pinocchio had thought ahead that far.

He pulled up onto a gravel drive that led away from the main road. A signless signpost marked the turnoff. Hobbes had emptied the canteen and now seemed to feel slightly more comfortable, for he had turned away from Pinocchio and was gazing out the window, grimy fingers pressed against the glass. Pinocchio was reminded of Dexter, and smiled tightly. It would have been good to have Dexter here. Dexter might have made more of an impression.

On either side of the gravel road were smaller drives, leading off into the trees. Short wooden posts marked each drive, rusted metal numbers still clinging to the wood. Pinocchio drove past a series of these before turning up one of them, bumping over even rougher gravel. After a few seconds the trees opened into a small clearing, in the middle of which was a small cabin. In the front was a small concrete stoop, barely big enough for a lawn chair. Two sad looking windows flanked the door, glass panes long gone. Off to the side of the stoop was a metal circle topped with a grill, and an old-fashioned hand pump. Once upon a time the cabin had been for the use of vacationers and campers, people who wanted to get away from it all. Now it was being used that way again, albeit in a slightly different sense.

Pinocchio pulled to a stop along the edge of the clearing and peered past Hobbes at the cabin. "Home sweet home," he said, "at least for now. We'll probably only be able to stay here a day or so, but it's something." He opened the driver's side door, stretching as he stood, feeling his stiff joints crack pleasantly. He had popped the trunk, pulled out his pack, and made it halfway to the door when he realized that Hobbes wasn't following. He turned, sighing inwardly. Of course.

Hobbes was still inside the car because he didn't remember how the doors worked. It would have almost been funny if it didn't hurt.

He walked back to the car, unlocked the door, and pulled it open. Hobbes just sat there and looked at him, his eyes oddly blank. Pinocchio jerked his head towards the cabin. "C'mon. You wanna sleep out here? There's food in there, and more water, and—" Pinocchio wrinkled his nose. "Definitely a bath, I think." He held out his hand. "Come on."

Still hesitant, Hobbes reached out and took it, letting Pinocchio help him to his feet. He looked awkward standing upright, as though it was not something he was used to. He wavered slightly. Pinocchio considered half-carrying him to the cabin, then decided against it. Not with how skittish Hobbes had been. He turned, shifting the pack higher on his back—and felt a quick, hard tug at his hip. He knew immediately what it was and what had happened, and he swore silently. _Stupid._ He whirled around, dropping the pack heedlessly behind him.

His knife was gone. Hobbes was gone. There were crashing sounds past the treeline, in where the leaves made everything dim and strangely colorless.

_Fucking hell. _Definitely _not_ an extremely good week. He charged into the trees, stopped, and pulled out his gun, trying not to let the action sting as much as it did. More crashing off to his left and he ran towards it, cursing as he ran. Hobbes. Fucking Hobbes. _You never could just let things be simple._


End file.
